


Kyrie Eleison

by madmadeleine



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Fate & Destiny, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 09:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1774954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madmadeleine/pseuds/madmadeleine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of two boys trapped in a destiny greater than either of them that threatens to tear them apart. Song of Achilles fusion AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kyrie Eleison

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fusion with [The Song of Achilles](http://amzn.com/0062060627), an excellent book by Madeline Miller that will rip your heart to shreds. Thanks and apologies.

It is said that a red string connects those whom the gods have entwined. In 1917, James Buchanan Barnes is born with a red stripe on the inside of his right forearm. In 1918, Steven Grant Rogers is born with a perfect line on his left.

 

It starts when James is twelve and Steve eleven. Steve is no more than some scrawny, stupid kid getting his ass handed to him in an alley. Bucky ducks in, against his better judgment. Five minutes later, he’s helping him stand as three boys run away as fast as they can. “That kid is crazy!” he hears one of them yell. It doesn’t matter, because blood is pooling on ash-grey cheeks and in golden hair and time has stopped as Bucky lays the boy down gently on the packed dirt of the alley.

“Thanks,” he mumbles. His eyes are starting to roll.

 _Shit_. “Kid, you gotta stay awake. C’mon, tell me where you live.”

“Name’s not kid. ‘s Steve. I live at the orphanage that way.” He waves a hand in a gesture that he must think is illuminating but is actually completely unhelpful. “You, you should come with me, I’ll take you, you have to come, you saved…”

“Shhh, calm down.” Bucky sponges the blood from Steve’s face and presses his own shirt to the cut on Steve’s temple. “I’ll get you there, Steve, I promise.” Reluctantly, he hauls Steve onto his feet and goes where Steve tells him until they reach a squat brick building.

“Hello?” he calls into the lobby. “Anyone here?”

A man takes quick strides into the hall, introduces himself as Peleus, and quickly bears Steve’s body to a bed in a large room. Bucky hesitates. It’s his moment to leave, to leave and never see this kid again. But he still feels the heat of Steve’s fingers in his hands, so he follows and sits on the bed by Steve.

Peleus levels a sharp glance at Bucky. “What happened to him?”

“Fight must’ve gone bad,” Bucky says, looking at the scuffed linoleum. “I found him in an alley and he told me to take him here.”

“You did well,” Peleus says, and his voice is gentler now. “Where are you sleeping tonight, Mr…”

“Barnes. James Barnes. I have a place.”

The man looks like he doesn’t believe him. “Well, if you wish, there can be a place for you here. Good luck, Mr. Barnes, whatever you choose.” He turns on his heel and leaves.

Bucky looks at Steve, who’s regained quite a bit of color in his cheeks. There’s still a bit of blood in his hair, and Bucky wants nothing more than to reach forward and get it out. He clamps his other hand on his wrist and prepares to say goodbye to this strange boy.

Steve sits up. “James, you should…”

“Nobody calls me James. It was my father’s name. Call me Bucky.”

Steve smiles and Bucky’s heart drops out of his chest. “Bucky.” Steve grabs Bucky’s wrists with slim, gentle hands. “You should stay.”

He is powerless. He cannot move, he cannot breathe. _He will destroy me_.

He stays.

 

After that cold November day, Bucky is Steve’s constant companion. He learns that Peleus acts as a father for the boys, but a distant one, and Bucky stays out of his way except when Peleus visits Steve. It is clear that Peleus really does view Steve as a son; the visits come frequently. This time, he finds only Bucky.

“Where’s Steve? I thought the two of you were like those Siamese twins.”

“He said he was running an errand for Sister Carlotta,” Bucky says quietly. “He didn’t want me to come. I’ll fix him up when he comes home with a bloody nose, don’t worry.”

Peleus looks at him meditatively. “I can see why he chose you, Barnes.” He sits on an empty bed. “He’s a special kid, you know? I’ll be sad to see you two go, but God knows we desperately need the space. He’s a good kid, and he needs you with him, Barnes. You’ll do great things. He’s destined for it.”

Bucky does not question the fact that this destiny applies only to Steve. Steve is remarkable, nimble-fingered and good for a laugh and always, always willing to stand up for whatever will get him beaten to a pulp in a back alley. Bucky is the kid who pulled him out once and got some of the luster that Steve carries everywhere transferred to him.

“Yes, sir,” is all he says, and Peleus walks away.

 

Steve turns thirteen the night before they leave the orphanage. He and Bucky sneak away to the attic with a stack of comics and a bottle of whiskey Bucky stole from the corner shop down the street. They sit behind a stack of boxes, knees touching and foreheads inches apart. The night goes on as they read comics, get mildly tipsy, and talk about nothing. As night bleeds into morning, Steve falls into Bucky’s shoulder.

“We have to leave today,” he mumbles.

“Yes, I know.”

“We’re going to find a place together, and it’s going to be great.”

“Yeah, Steve,” Bucky says softly. “You and me, pal. ‘Til the end of the line.” He brings a hand to Steve’s hair and starts stroking it absently. He freezes when the motion registers. _Shit. Shit shit shit_. He’d managed to restrain himself from doing this for so long. Apparently all it takes to ruin his control is a few swallows of whiskey.

But Steve doesn’t seem to mind. He’s curling into the touch, in fact, and Bucky can't believe what happens next. Steve turns his face up to Bucky’s, grabs Bucky by the suspenders, and kisses him like nothing else matters.

It feels like sunshine and fireworks and it tastes like whiskey and peppermint and shit, shit, Steve must be so drunk, and Bucky yanks back and scuttles across the room, knocking several boxes to the floor in his haste. He wants to whimper at the loss of contact, but he bites his lip and drops his gaze.

He wants to tell Steve that he’s not good enough for him, that he could work for lifetimes and never deserve what Steve has given him, that Steve is destined for something greater than a back alley in Brooklyn and it is Bucky’s job to stand behind him and not as his equal. But the words do not come. He does not trust his treacherous mouth.

Steve stiffens and turns bright red. He runs from the room, downstairs, out the door. Bucky hears the door slam and finally the words come. “Steve,” he whispers to a room that is too silent to bear. “I’m so sorry.”

 

He knows where Steve will go, and there is no reason to stay with Peleus without him. Peleus gives him a few coins and a duffle bag for the clothes Steve left. All he took with him was a sketchbook and a pencil, the idiot, and so Bucky slings the bag over his shoulder and begins to run. He passes the diner where they first met and resolutely does not look at that alley. He finds Steve in an empty apartment a few blocks away from the docks. He takes a minute outside the door, winded from the sprint, to wonder how his life became like this. He doesn’t regret anything. His life is twined with Steve’s now, and he does not think of that desperate kiss as he opens the door.

“You left your clothes, punk.”

Steve hesitates, but then a broad smile creases his skinny features. It’s like the sun’s come out again. “So give them to me, jerk.”

Bucky sits down on the floor. This is, in fact, the apartment he’d had in mind. It’s close to the docks, where he has a job, and close enough to the doctor’s that he can worry a little less about Steve surviving a night.

 _Great things_ , he thinks. _Great things_.

He looks at the laughing boy across from him, and reaches out to ruffle golden hair. _There’s still time_.

 

Bucky is sixteen and it is bitterly cold in their tiny apartment. He shivers as he takes his coat off and lays it across Steve’s shaking body. Fever-bright eyes open and chapped lips whisper, “Bucky?”

“It’s me, Steve. I’m here. I got your medicine, so sit up and take it.” He doesn’t reflect too long on what it took to get the money for it. Steve sits up and Bucky tips the liquid down his throat.

“I’m so cold, Buck.”

“I know, Stevie. I know. I’ll talk to the landlord in the morning and get the damn heating turned on.”

“Stay?” Steve’s voice catches, and Bucky curls his body around the trembling one on the bed. He doesn’t think before nuzzling into Steve’s neck, doesn’t meditate on why he shouldn’t enjoy Steve’s skin on his. They stay like this for what feels like hours.

As morning sun shines on Steve’s face, he turns to Bucky, and with a sudden fierceness, says, “Don’t you dare take this back,” before he kisses Bucky for all he’s worth.

Bucky’s taken by surprise and is pinned under Steve and cannot think, cannot breathe, because Steve is on his lips again, tasting of medicine and peppermint and in no better condition to think than he was last time. Bucky can’t do this to him, can’t ruin his life, but Steve is all around him and Bucky thinks, _fuck it_. He deepens the kiss and Steve whimpers and Bucky knows he was lost when he first laid a hand on him in that back alley. Bucky flips Steve onto his back and presses him into the mattress until Steve breaks away, flushed with more than fever.

“Buck, I can’t breathe,” he laughs, but the laugh comes more like a wheeze and Bucky is off him in less than a second. Steve takes a moment to catch his breath. Below them, Brooklyn is alive with activity, but there is nothing in this world for Bucky but Steve. Steve, the boy whose hair gleams on his pillow, whose skinny body is lost to blankets as he struggles to breathe through giggles of sheer joy.

This is what he will miss when destiny comes for Steve Rogers. He would kill himself rather than miss this.

_How long do we have?_ he thinks as he kisses Steve again.

 

The answer comes on December 8th of 1941, when the US enters World War II. Steve tries to enlist, despite Bucky’s pleas.

“Steve, you’ll get yourself killed in a heartbeat if you go.”

“You’re going!” Steve is pacing around the apartment, hands twitching with impatience. “Everyone is going. People are laying down their lives, and I have no right to do anything less.”

Bucky tells himself he’s not glad when Steve gets rejected the first time. He tries to tamp down the surge of joy that wells up in him whenever Steve gets turned down at a new recruitment office. He is not happy that Steve’s scrawny body keeps him from his lofty destiny.

But, in fact, he is, and every week that the Army rejects Steve is another week wrested from the Fates. He steals kisses from Steve in the darkness, where the world is the two of them and the war is forgotten.

He knows every inch of Steve’s body now, every line, every scar, every pockmark. He can kiss lean muscle and taste old, familiar ground.

 _I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world_ , he realizes as he trails his mouth lazily on the inside of Steve’s thighs. _And I am ruined for it._

Bucky knows that their time is running low. He can see Steve’s frenzied pacing and the mania in his eyes, can taste bitter salt when they trade kisses at night. Bucky himself has been on the draft rota for too long; his orders come within weeks of Steve’s third rejection. He hangs the uniform in the closet and tries not to think about the wedge it’s driving between them. Jealousy is less important than breath in Steve’s body.

There’s another pain, a deeper one, the pain of constant secrecy. “It’s not unusual for two guys to be friends,” Bucky tells Steve one night. “But we gotta do something else, something with girls, or some snoop’s going to report us to Vice and life’s over for both of us.”

Steve grimaces, but Bucky’s familiar with the steely determination in his eyes. “What do I have to do, Buck?”

“Nothing, Stevie.” Bucky flashes a grin that’s less than a shadow of his real one. “I’ll date enough dames for the both of us.”

And so the double dates commence, aided greatly by Bucky’s uniform and Steve’s shy good looks. Steve hates it, every single element of it, and Bucky knows it. Steve’s too good for a life lived in closets, but they both know it’s necessary. Bucky makes sure to lavish him with attention on date nights.

“Don’t think about her,” he whispers, pressing his lips to every place on Steve’s body tonight’s girl’s hands had been. “It’s only you, Steve, ‘till the end of the line.”

Steve shudders underneath him with every whisper and every touch. As Bucky curls around Steve’s body, he thinks, _as long as you will let me be, I am yours_. The room is too small to hold the words, so he takes Steve’s hand instead.

Steve snuggles closer and mumbles Bucky’s name. He’s always had a way with words.

 

Bucky’s last night stateside is a warm June night in 1943, and they’re going on another goddamn double date. It doesn’t make things any better that he’d had to pull Steve out of another alley earlier that day. They’d had a blowout fight afterwards.

“What the hell, Steve?”

“Look, Bucky, I had him, okay? You did not need to get involved.”

“Like hell I didn’t.” Bucky’s voice rises in pitch. “I’m sorry you’re medically ineligible, Steve.” He’s not. “But it’s time to face the facts.”

“So what, you want me to collect scrap metal like little Timmy?” Steve throws the pencil he’d been fiddling with onto the table. It falls to the floor. “I’m sorry you can’t pull me out of alleys forever, Bucky. But you can’t. This is what I’m meant to do; it’s what Mr. Peleus was talking about.” Steve’s eyes are shining. “It’s my _destiny_ , Bucky.”

This is it, then, it’s heavier than lead in Bucky’s stomach. There’s an iron band around his lungs and in his heart because he cannot protect Steve forever. “They’ll catch you, Steve, or worse, they’ll actually take you.” He cannot think of anything worse on the Earth.

“There are men laying down their lives, Bucky. I got no right to do any less.”

What can Bucky say to that? He want to laugh, loud and long and hysterical, because James Buchanan Barnes is not the hero of this story, and he cannot refuse the blonde boy from Brooklyn whose hair gleams brighter than any halo could. There is nothing he can do now, save try to get the taste of blood and ash out of his mouth.

“Let’s just go,” he says heavily. “It’s my last night and I want to get so drunk.”

Steve laughs as he shrugs on his coat, but anybody could tell how hollow it is.

 

“This isn’t about me,” Steve pleads as he and Bucky stand just in front of the Expo’s recruitment tent.

“Right.” Bucky’s voice is acid. “Because you got nothing to prove.” He sees Steve wince, but he’s too angry to care how he hurts Steve. _Anything, anything I can say to make you stay_. He’s about to say more when the most vapid girl he has ever met calls back to him, asking about dancing. Bucky takes his arm away from Steve’s wrist.

“Don’t do anything stupid ‘till I get back.”

“How can I? You’re taking all the stupid with you.” The words are familiar, the pain behind them less so.

“You’re a punk,” he manages to spit out.

“Jerk,” Steve’s reply comes.

“Careful,” Bucky says, like it’s a prayer or a magic spell that can keep Steve out of Europe. He turns on his heel and walks towards a night full of emptiness.

“Don’t win the war ‘till I get there!” Steve’s words are carried by the wind and swallowed just as easily.

For the first time since the age of twelve, James Buchanan Barnes is alone on the Earth.

 

-

 

Steve slips away into the recruitment tent at the Expo while Bucky has his back turned and girls on either arm. Bucky’s already wearing the uniform. He’s not going to understand. Steve enters the room, fills out familiar paperwork. He’ll be from New Haven this time. He ignores the sign reminding him that it’s illegal to lie on the enlistment forms.

Dr. Erskine tells him he’s officially enlisted in the United States Military. He doesn’t think about the haunted look in Bucky’s eyes.

Training is harder than he expected. The drills are a constant terror, he knows that Colonel Phillips doesn’t believe he’s going to make it, and Peggy Carter’s piercing eyes and red mouth follow him even into his dreams.

“Trust in your destiny,” she whispers, “and you will be great. Cast off your attachments and be the man I know you to be.”

He tries not to think of Bucky in the 107th. He replaces green eyes with brown, plush pink lips with red-painted ones. He sticks to his drills and hopes to be the man that the Peggy Carter of his dreams tells him he can be.

And then comes the foregone conclusion; he is chosen and becomes something greater, literally. He doesn’t know what to do with his body now that it will do anything he tells it to. Unfortunately, there are enough people ready to tell him that he has no choice. On stage, off stage, so many cities, so little time. None of it means anything until a rainy day and an army camp and what’s left of the 107th.

 _Bucky_ , he thinks, and nothing else matters until he’s skydiving over Azzano.

 

-

 

 _War’s not so bad_ , Bucky thinks absently, _until you get captured and cut into by fucking Nazis_. He closes his eyes against a fresh wave of pain and thinks about Steve. He does more often than not, here in this little Italian hellhole where nobody knows what he’s thinking. Hell, maybe Zola does know by now. He’s pretty sure he’s been sticking to name, rank, and serial number, but who the fuck knows what he says when Zola wields that blue thing. Every part of his body shakes. At least Steve is safe, he thinks desperately. That last hope keeps him warm on the German’s table.

Days pass between episodes of consciousness. He thinks about warm days in the apartment, thinks about modeling for Steve, thinks about anything but cold and wet and pain. He repeats “Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, 32557…” He can’t remember the rest. Even his name is slipping from memory, until he sees a familiar face loom over him. It’s even better than a bucket of cold water.

(He should know.)

“Bucky,” says the voice, and his world is ending.

“Oh my God,” somebody says. It might be him. He doesn’t know what’s coming out of his mouth and what he’s managing to keep inside. _No, no, it can’t be you, it can’t be, I was supposed to keep you safe! I wanted to keep you from this please Steve let this all be a fever dream and let Zola come again I can take pain I can take anything that isn’t this_. But these are Steve’s hands, the hands of Destiny, come to rip what he loves from him.

“It’s me, it’s Steve,” Steve says, and he thinks he’s being soothing but Bucky can’t look at him.

“Steve?”

“I thought you were dead,” says the faint voice from above.

“I thought you were smaller,” Bucky breathes, his last hope dying on his lips.

 

He doesn’t remember much of the escape, but Steve tries to get Bucky to leave without him, the asshole. He should know better by now.

 

They’re back at camp, Steve and Bucky and the rest of the 107th. Everything is chaos and infectious glee. It feels good, Steve’s warmth at his side again. Perhaps he can make his peace with fate if he can follow this man.

Steve told him on the way back that the Army’d given him a new name to go with the new body. “Captain America,” he’d said. He’d blushed a little, but the look he gave Bucky seemed to dare Bucky to say something.

“It goes with the costume,” came Bucky’s reply, and Steve had just laughed in that way that made the earth shake and Bucky’s world shrink until it was just Steve.

 _It’s a new name for a new man_ , Bucky thinks. _The Army can keep their Captain America. I have Steve Rogers_.

“Three cheers for Captain America!” he yells, and if his voice shakes a bit, who can blame him? Months strapped to a table will do a number on anyone’s vocal chords.

 

They’re in a tent, just the two of them, as it should be. Bucky had refused medical treatment and regrets it now as he shakes uncontrollably. Steve makes him lie down.

“What did Zola do to you, Buck?” he asks, lips pressed to Bucky’s neck.

“Don’t ask me that, Stevie. Anything but that,” Bucky begs, enclosed in the warmth of a body much bigger than he’s used to. 

“Oh, Buck,” Steve whispers. He moves away but Bucky grabs him by the wrists and pulls him back down.

“Remember when we used to do this back in Brooklyn?” Bucky whispers, almost pleading. He needs this, needs Steve. Steve can take away the pain of operating tables and maybe make his hands stop shaking. “Our positions were definitely reversed, though.”

“Depends,” Steve grins slyly. “Do you remember this?” he murmurs as he mouths a path down Bucky’s chest. Bucky grins and pulls Steve back up so he can kiss him properly.

 

The next few days see Steve shoved into the heart of the war. _This is it_ , a voice whispers in his head, and Bucky shudders. He’s seen what happens to idealists like Steve who get put where they don’t belong by fool luck or the cruelty of the US Army.  But over these few days, Steve proves Bucky altogether wrong. He is in his element, strategizing and marking HYDRA bases and disappearing for long talks with Colonel Phillips and Peggy Carter. Steve spends hours with the two, marking new bases based on Bucky’s intel and planning offensives. Bucky knows where he’s not needed, even though Steve tries to give him busywork, and so he spends his time with the others from Azzano instead. He likes these men whom experience has made his brothers and conversation his friends. They’re good people in a bad place.

Steve’s days may be given to Stark and Peggy, but his nights are for Bucky, and Bucky takes every morsel he can get. They curl together in the tent they share, talking about camp life or trading memories or stealing kisses. More often than not, they simply lie back to back, happy to be in the same place. _There is so little time_ , Bucky reflects, _almost none left_. He doesn’t mind as much as he used to.

 

The next day, Agent Carter comes to their tent.

“Steve’s field testing with Howard,” Bucky says automatically, hands busy cleaning his gun.

“I know,” says Peggy, and her voice could stop a thousand men in their tracks.

“So, if you don’t mind, ma’am, why are you here?”

“I wanted to speak to you, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Me?” Bucky’s sure the disbelief in his voice registers with her. “Why?”

Peggy chooses her next words with care. “It’s about Captain Rogers. Steve.”

Bucky’s hands go very, very still as he sets down the rifle. “What about Steve?”

“Well, you and Steve.”

“What about it, Agent Carter?” His voice is quiet, but it’s lethal, and the two of them know Peggy’s treading on very thin ice.

“You’re holding him back,” Peggy says. “You can see just as well as I can that he’s woven into history with bonds that can’t be broken by you or me or anyone on this earth. Very few people can see that you two are connected by something greater than love.”

“If you say ‘destiny,’ I’m prepared to deck you,” Bucky says harshly.

“Try me,” says Peggy, and Bucky flinches from the steel in her voice. “Sergeant Barnes. James. You have to give him up, don’t you understand? We cannot win this war without him, and he will not enter it how we need him to without you. You need to release him from your promises and leave him to his fate.”

“If you know what he’s destined for, Agent Carter, then you know exactly why that’s not about to happen. I know I’m not meant for greatness. James Buchanan Barnes ain’t the hero of this story. But I am damn well going to stay at his six for as long as he’ll have me watching his back, and you and your destiny aren’t interfering with me in the picture.”

“You can be out of the picture.”

“If I’m out, so is he, and you know it. He won’t do a damn thing for you without me.”

Peggy looks at him meditatively. “Unfortunately for the United States and the Allied forces, you’re right. I hope you can handle the mess you’ve brought on your head.”

“I’m not the one who brought this on. You and I both know Steve was in it from the start.”

She shakes her head, curls swinging. “Perhaps it is only the people who love the doomed that can see the fate that awaits them.” She stands up to leave.

“For what it’s worth,” Bucky says, “I’m sorry he can’t love you in the way you want.”

Peggy smirks, but there’s no real mirth to it. “I love him, yes, but not in the way you seem to.” She ducks out of the tent. “Remember this when it all goes to shit, Sergeant Barnes.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bucky mutters as the canvas tent flap swings in the wind.

 

Colonel Phillips assigns Steve a new, elite group, intended to take out HYDRA facilities all over Europe. Steve fixes him with a cool, level gaze and chooses his own men – all the guys from Bolzano. Bucky knows he’s doing it partly for his sake, and the pleased smile he gives Steve isn’t false at all.

They head to a bar, hoping to convince everyone else. Well, Steve hopes to convince everyone else. Bucky hopes to get as drunk as he can as quickly as he can, and heads straight for the bar when they walk in. He feels Steve’s disapproving eyes boring into his back, but at this point, he really doesn’t give a shit. His hands are still shaking from Italy.

He can hear the bulk of the conversation from his spot on the corner. Dernier is in, Gabe and Dum-Dum and all the rest, and he smiles to himself. They’re good guys, and he’ll feel a hell of a lot better going on a whirlwind tour of Europe with them on his six. The conversation ends in laughter, and he hears Steve get up and cross to the bar.

“So, soldier,” Steve says, grinning. “Are you ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

“Hell no,” replies Bucky. He smirks at the crestfallen look on Steve’s face. “That little guy from Brooklyn, though, I could do that. I’m following him.”

“Fair enough,” Steve says, and they clink glasses.

“Can you even get drunk anymore?” Bucky laughs and the two sit in amiable silence until Peggy Carter enters the room in that bright red dress.

Something in Bucky’s face hardens where Steve can’t see as he stands up to greet Peggy. Bucky stands too, legs unsteady but anger more than making up for it.

“I see your top squad is prepping for duty,” she remarks, disdain dripping from every syllable.

“What, you don’t like music?” Bucky says easily, ignoring Steve’s warning glare and the ice in Peggy’s eyes.

“I do, actually. I may even, when all this is over, go dancing.” She glances at Steve and Bucky’s anger swells sudden and burning.

“Then what are we waiting for?” he says, arms thrust out expansively, desperately.

“The right partner,” comes her soft reply. “Pay attention, Captain,” she tells Steve as she walks away.

“Yes, ma’am,” says Steve, snapping to attention. “I’ll be there.”

“I’m invisible,” Bucky laughs, and the disapproval fades from Steve’s eyes. “I’m turning into you; it’s like a horrible dream.”

“Don’t take it so hard,” and that evil grin does not belong on Captain America’s rosy visage. “Maybe she’s got a friend.”

 

The war trundles on, despite their best efforts. Steve now spends time with Howard Stark in addition to Peggy Carter, developing a new shield and new tactical gear for missions with the Commandos. Bucky doesn’t trust Howard Stark, not by a long shot. Stark’s smiles are quick to come and quicker to leave and always leave some parting barb behind. But Steve doesn’t trust him either, Steve, who is so open with everyone, so Bucky never worries about what Stark’s telling him this week.

Steve gets his new shield, personally tested by a very angry Agent Carter. The two of them laugh about it in their tent that night, but Bucky’s conversation with Peggy is still weighing heavily on him and he breaks up the story with deep, searing kisses. On their last night, they just sit together in the tent, breathing each other’s air.

“It’ll be okay, Buck.”

Bucky pulls away. “I’m not six, Steve. I know it’ll be okay. It’ll be fine, maybe even a little fun.”

“You know what I mean.”

 

The Commandos are good men. They are loyal, efficient, and their company is pleasant. They all know about Bucky and Steve after that night by the fire when Bucky fell asleep on Steve’s shoulder. None of them give two shits, and they go all over Europe. Steve tells them where they’re going, Monty helps him figure out how they get there, Dum-Dum gets them there, and Dernier blows everything up when they are there. Gabe and Jim make damn sure they get out, and Bucky just picks off bad guys along the way. He’s had a few close calls with Steve, and nobody HYDRA gets within ten feet of him if Bucky can avoid it.

“Barnes! When you’re done babysitting the Captain, I need some help over here!” Dernier yells, and Bucky grumbles as he sprints over. That night at the camp, they call Steve ‘Mrs. Barnes,’ and laugh themselves silly when Steve’s face glows bright red.

In Germany, just outside of their next mission in Switzerland, Bucky can’t shake the deep sense of foreboding that washes over him. Steve tries his best to make Bucky smile, but his thoughts are a million miles away.

“I love you, Steve, you know that, right?” Bucky whispers as the two fall asleep.

“Of course, Buck. We’ve got time.”

 _No. We don't_.

 

And then, of course, they’re on a train car in Switzerland, shooting at Zola’s goons, and Bucky knows that this is the end of the line. They’re fighting and fighting, and Bucky manages to kill a few but he knows it’s not enough. Steve’s in the next car chasing Zola, and Bucky has his shield, and it’s not enough. He holds the shield before him, one last desperate plea, and shoots and shoots until the boy from Brooklyn is out of bullets. The thug kicks him out of the open compartment and not yet, he has to tell Steve goodbye.

 

-

 

Steve fights and fights. He hears Bucky in the next compartment and smiles to himself as he kicks another mercenary’s teeth in. Bucky can handle himself. It’s not the end. He bursts through the door, imagining the stories Bucky will tell to the guys when they’re at camp. Bucky’s always so good with stories.

What Steve sees threatens to drive him to his knees as he sprints to the open door. Not this, not this, _he promised me_.

“Bucky!” he calls desperately. “Hang on, grab my hand!”

Bucky stretches out one hand, but it’s not enough. The look on his face is too serene, too accepting, and it cannot be the look on Bucky’s face because this is not what is supposed to happen.

“BUCKY!” His scream echoes over the Alps as Bucky falls and falls and falls. _He’s gone. I need him with me, this must be a dream_. “Bucky, Bucky." The fevered words come over and over again until the body disappears.

 

-

 _It’s alright, dying like this_ , Bucky thinks as he falls. _It’s okay. It’s okay_. He thinks of Steve laughing, of sunlight in golden hair, of a kid who couldn’t stay out of back alleys and big battles, of the man he lived with and loved until the end. He remembers everything, the bad and the good and the cold and the light, and he lets it wash over him as he plummets into the Alps. He whispers Steve's name just before the snow takes him.

 

 

There, at the bottom of the Alps, and later in a Russian laboratory, the Winter Soldier is born, and James Buchanan Barnes and the destiny that came with him is for nothing. The Soldier thinks he can almost remember a man, who smiled and made him laugh and who he thinks he may have loved. But the Soldier doesn’t love anyone. 

The Soldier fights, the Soldier kills, the Soldier bleeds, but Bucky is gone. Whatever part of the man he was has been turned into a restless ghost, omniscient but powerless.

It is all for nothing until a man on a bridge whispers, _Bucky_ , and James is reborn.

 _Steve_.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! comments are so greatly appreciated, but I won't be able to reply to them since I'm going to be out of town and computerless for a good week. please tell me what you think ([you can find me on tumblr here](http://www.mrymorstn.tumblr.com)), and I hope you enjoyed!  
> the title means "Lord, have mercy" in Ancient Greek (Κύριε ἐλέησον).


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